Supporting Yilan's small farmers, starting with business: Shuhuo Restaurant

For the past three years, the Rihe Education Foundation has actively cooperated with Fongyi Company on activities for friendly land stewardship, environmental protection, and caring for the health of employees and their families. The foundation was established in 2003 by Mr. Chen Cheng-fang (Eric), chairman of Fongyi Electronic Company, using Neicheng Village, Yuanshan Township, Yilan County as its practice base to promote ecological conservation, environmental education, and healthy farming methods. For example: organizing lectures related to diet and environmental protection, leading company employees to visit farms in Yilan, and starting in July 2010, jointly promoting corporate CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with Dawang Caipuzi of Hualien, establishing the "Shuhuo Club" to moderately subsidize employees and encourage everyone to order organic fruits and vegetables.

However, due to the busy urban lifestyle, combined with the fact that most young people lack the habit and ability to cook their own food, among the company's more than 400 employees, the number willing to order organic fresh fruits and vegetables to take home long-term was actually less than 1/10. Since urban people's consumption and eating habits cannot be changed immediately, we decided to have the employee cafeteria directly provide healthy and convenient food!

Challenges and Expectations

Along the way, Shuhuo Restaurant has continuously adjusted its menu content, cooking methods, and operations. During the transition period, it encountered many difficulties, for example: in order to purchase safe ingredients, some dining options were reduced, causing complaints from employees; the free-range chicken bought from small farmers was a whole chicken, rather than the previously standardized chicken leg cutlets, and the chef resisted because he thought it was difficult to cook; because small farmers' output is not very stable, purchasing staff sometimes had to buy ingredients from multiple producers, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. In addition, some people who often ate out felt that the taste after the restaurant's transformation was "too light" and were not used to it.

Another challenge is that because the cost of friendly ingredients is higher than that of conventional ingredients, the company subsidizes part of the cost as an employee benefit. At the same time, Shuhuo Restaurant has also begun evaluating various costs and expenses, hoping to establish a standard model that can make the restaurant self-sufficient and sustainable.

We hope that Shuhuo Restaurant can become a reference example, encouraging more company employee cafeterias to adopt local/organic/healthy ingredients. In addition to caring for employee health, it can also promote the concept of protecting the ecological environment, influence employees' families through employees, and then serve as a catalyst to call on more corporate forces to support friendly agriculture and care for our land!

Reference Materials
Rihe Education Foundation